Youth
by vaurienne
Summary: An intern joins Doctor House's team as they care for a young boy with a mysterious neurological condition. Last chapter fixed and author's note added.
1. Teaser

House glanced up from his GameBoy as the clinic doors swung open to admit a rushed-looking Wilson. "Why are you so dressed up?" House demanded leisurely, sizing up the oncologist with a single glance.

"Dressed up?" Wilson repeated in confusion, pausing to look down at himself. "I'm not dressed up." He couldn't see that he was wearing anything unusual: shirt, pants, tie, lab coat. He was missing his stethoscope, but that was the reason he was in the clinic; he thought he remembered leaving it in one of the exam rooms.

"Fine," House acquiesced, "you're not dressed up. You just ironed your lab coat and wore a new tie just for the hell of it. Who is she? Anyone I know?"

"I'm not dressed up!" Wilson asserted.

House fixed him with a stare. "Your lab coat has…"

"Fine," Wilson broke in with a sigh. It was easier just to admit it. "But there's no girl."

"Who's _he _then?" House questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"It's new intern day," Wilson told him, staring back levelly.

"So you're trying to make a good impression on the snot-nosed medical neophyte unfortunate enough to be entrusted to you now so that when you show up next week having forgotten to comb your hair, they'll still think of you as a professional?" House demanded derisively.

Wilson just shook his head and glanced at his watch. His intern would probably already be waiting for him upstairs. They were always early on the first day.

"That's what I thought," House commented, taking Wilson's silence as agreement. "It's pathetic," headed, returning to his game without a glance over at the waiting room full of patients that he was supposed to be seeing. Cuddy wasn't in yet, so he could be a little more brazen than usual.

"You know," Wilson observed, deciding to take a moment to chat seeing as how he was already late, "you're back working in the clinic again this year, and what with the close shave you had with Vogler…"

"If you can count what I do around here as work," House interrupted lazily.

"Anyway," Wilson remarked, continuing back on his way to Exam Two in search of his stethoscope, "you might wind up wishing that you'd ironed clothes. Or that you'd worn a tie. Or, maybe, I don't know, a lab coat…"

"Cuddy wouldn't dare," House declared confidently.

------------------------------

"Did you forget to turn off the lights when you left last night?" Cameron asked as the three fellows rounded the corner and saw an unfamiliar light coming from their offices. Unless one of them had stayed to work an overnight shift or on the rare occasion that House beat them in to work, the offices were always dark when they first arrived.

"No," Chase replied, shaking his head for emphasis, "I turned them out. We're just not the first ones in this morning."

"Don't you remember House saying yesterday he was going straight to the clinic?" Foreman said. "Cuddy's busy with the new interns and he wanted to get the time out of the way before he could get stuck with something that would saddle him down for the weekend. So that rules him out, and the three of us are here."

"It's no big deal," Cameron assured Chase. "It's just not like you to forget."

"I didn't forget," he protested again.

"Don't tell me that working with House has given you an inflated sense of your own infallibility," Foreman groaned.

"No," Chase repeated firmly, "but I turned out the light. I would bet, however, that whoever is waiting for us in there turned them back on." He pointed. The others, following the direction of his outstretched finger, finally saw the same dark silhouette that Chase had already spotted.

The fellows exchanged curious glances before wordlessly speeding up their paces and bursting into the room, anxious to find out who was waiting. It had been apparent from the silhouette that it wasn't House, who wouldn't have been waiting patiently anway, and they were keen to discover who was there and why.

When they entered the outer office, they found a slight blonde perched nervously on one of the chairs pulled up around the table. Dressed soberly in a pleated grey skirt and a blue sweater, her short lab coat immediately identified her as an intern. "Would any of you happen…" she started, turning her blue eyes questioningly to each of the three in turn as she stood to greet them. One hand anxiously fiddled with the hospital ID clipped to her pocket and the other rested flat on the glass tabletop.

"Nope," Foreman interrupted with a grin. "But we'll be happy to page Doctor House up here right away."

The girl nodded, smiling hesitantly back at him. "Thank you," she said. "I had been told that this was his suite of offices and that I would be best waiting for him here." Although her English was flawless, it became quickly obvious that she hadn't been American-born. There was a soft foreign inflection to her voice, but it was neither as strong nor as familiar as Chase's Australian twang.

"You're in the right spot," Cameron assured her as Chase moved off to the telephone to page House. "I'm Allison Cameron, one of Doctor House's team."

"I'm Eric Foreman," he said, offering his hand to her, "and over there is Robert Chase." Chase offered a wave from the telephone as Foreman performed the introduction for him. "We're the rest of the team."

"Katrien Verhoeven," she reciprocated, stepping across the room to take Foreman's offered hand.

"Oh, shit," Foreman breathed softly as he watched her cross over to him.


	2. Act I

------------------------------------------------------------

"House, a word," Cuddy called as he limped past her toward the elevators. She was glad to have caught him before he made it upstairs. She'd been busy with a board of governors meeting and the paperwork for all the new interns and had worried she wouldn't catch him.

"I got paged upstairs," he protested. "I'll be back down to finish your precious clinic hours just as soon as I deal with whatever Chase needs. Don't worry, you'll get your time out of me."

"Look, House," she told him with a sigh, "just do your job. That's all I ask of you."

House stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her. "You didn't," he stated flatly.

"You have three over-qualified fellows working for you and, much as it pains me to admit, you are one of the best…"

"You did," he said, cutting her off.

"Don't freak out. I really don't need you in my office five minutes from now, yelling at me." She'd had enough yelling at the board of governor's meeting to last her a lifetime.

"Right, because the mere sight of an intern is enough to send me flying into a panic. I don't spend my time trying to avoid patients. I spend it hiding from the sight of those short, white coats." House faked a shudder and resumed his walk toward the elevators.

"Just don't freak out," she repeated firmly, slapping a file into his chest and moving on down the hall."

"Incidentally," he called after her, turning to watch her walk away, "those short coats look much better on women than the do on men. You don't think that's sexual discrimination?"

She ignored him completely.

------------------------------

"What's your specialty?" House demanded irritably as he pushed open the door. The four younger doctors were sitting around the table making small talk, a fresh pot of coffee brewing behind them. "I've already got a neurologist, an immunologist, and an intensivist. All I need now is a partridge in a pear tree." He'd known better than to argue with Cuddy over assigning him an intern, especially so fresh after Vogler's threat against the whole department. But the lack of argument didn't mean he was pleased with the assignment.

"Internal medicine, sir," she replied politely, standing to greet him.

"Internal medicine," House repeated, sticking the file beneath his arm and fishing out his ever-present bottle of pills. "Now, Miss Verhoeven… Or wait… Is that Fraulien?" he mused, knocking back a pill dry. "No, that's German, not Dutch. How silly of me!"

"Mevrouw," Verhoeven offered helpfully.

"Hmm…" House drawled. "That wasn't quite the answer I was expecting. Woudn't the correct title have been 'doctor,' in whatever language you might have chosen?"

She was visibly taken aback for a moment, but managed to recover herself enough to stammer, "To introduce oneself using a title when it is not strictly necessary is generally considered poor form." She hesitated for a moment before adding, "Or at least it is if the Dutch convention is followed. Besides, sir, you had asked."

"Had I?" House asked in mock surprise. "I don't recall having asked. But maybe I just forgot. The drugs could be playing tricks with my memory." He rattled his Vicodin bottle for emphais.

She started blushing right up to the roots of her blonde hair. Trying valiantly to reclaim any shred of her lost dignity, she offered her hand out to him. "Although it is quite apparent that you are already aware of the fact, I am Katrien Verhoeven. Doktor Verhoeven, spelled with a k and not a c, if you would like the Dutch."

With a resigned sigh, House limped across the room to shake her hand. "Doctor Gregory House, apparently your attending. Only in one language, and not willingly."

The three fellows sat in uncomfortable silence as he took the final steps across to her. They were anxious to see how he would react to what they'd already seen, but didn't dare draw unnecessary attention to it. "What the hell is that?" he demanded, stopping and jabbing with his cane. He'd only made it half-way across the room before his sharp eyes picked it up.

Her face flushed even redder as she awkwardly let her hand drop back down to her side, mumbling some sort of an explanation that no one could hear. But it didn't matter because House was already leaving, furiously heading off in search of Cuddy.

------------------------------

"I suppose that you had some kind of twisted logic," he snapped, bringing his cane down on Cuddy's desk with a bang. "What was it? 'Let's stick all the cripples together so that they're out of everyone else's way!'"

"You're overreacting," she declared calmly, lifting her head from the paperwork to glare at House. She couldn't resist a glance at her clock: four minutes. She'd overestimated him earlier. "She's well-qualified and has an interest in epidemiology that I thought you might find useful."

"Not only is she a cripple, but she's also a liar," he stated. "She told me she was an internist."

"Why do you sound surprise? I thought you assumed everyone lied as a matter of principle," Cuddy snapped back. House stood before her, fuming silently. "She _is_ an internist," Cuddy sighed after a moment. "She has an _interest _in epidemiology and infectious diseases but she couldn't get accepted to do any of the fieldwork programs. Your little dream team was the closest match anyone could come up with."

"So I'm stuck with her?"

"Think of it as a learning opportunity."

He didn't bother to reply, storming out without another word.

------------------------------

"What'd you do?" House demanded brusquely, gesturing to Verhoeven's elbow crutch as the two rode the elevator together down to the clinic. "Car accident? Hip dysplasia?"

"Polio," she supplied reluctantly.

"Wow. You don't see that one much anymore."

"Outbreak in 1978 amongst a group who had refused vaccination. I had a play-date with one of the children."

"If you caught it, you couldn't have been vaccinated either," House noted. "But you still talk about it like an 'us' versus 'them' thing."

"Streptomycin allergy," she told him with a sigh.

"Unless you skipped out on that lesson in med school, you should know that there are _two _kinds of polio vaccine," House reminded her. "The oral vaccine doesn't have streptomycin."

She sighed again as the elevator door slid open. "It had to be ordered especially from Amsterdam. But the time it had arrived, it was already too late."

"Bit of a touchy subject, is it?"

"You haven't exactly been forthcoming yourself," she replied, trying to avoid any further questions.

"I'll take that as a big, fat yes," he declared, starting off down the hall toward the clinic. He was more cheerful now that he had someone to torment, so long as he didn't dwell on the fact he was stuck with her for longer than he cared to think about.

She hesitated for a moment, standing alone in the elevator, before following him unwillingly down the hall.

"Look," he said, wheeling around when he didn't hear her following him. "I don't' like it and you obviously don't like it, but we're stuck with one another regardless. I'm going to ask you questions you're not going to want to answer. I could just look in your personnel file or pull your medical records for the information, but right now, that just isn't as much for me."

"Yes, sir," she replied stiffly.

"Good, now that we understand one another, we're about to enter the circle of hell that even Dante couldn't bear to write about. You're going to see patients; I'm going to sit in the back of the exam room and amuse myself. If you need help diagnosing some kids' runny nose – it's probably a cold, just so you know – there are two other doctors on clinic duty that you can call in for a consult."

------------------------------

"Shouldn't you be, you know, seeing patients?" Wilson asked, shaking his head as he came up on House sitting in the hallway outside an exam room with his portable TV. A tall, gangly youth in a short coat trailed behind the oncologist, a chart clutched in his hands.

"You mean sitting inside the exam room instead of outside it?" House inquired. "I get better reception out here, and I have an intern who can see patients for me."

"You have to co-sign their orders," Wilson reminded him.

"She brings the charts out to me and I sign them. If it's a commercial break, sometimes I even read them first."

Wilson sighed and rolled his eyes. "This is Duncan Brown," he said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder to the intern behind him.

From inside he exam room came a loud crash and a metallic bang. House grinned as the door to the exam room swung open. "That is Katrien Verhoeven," he replied, "and she doesn't like it when the nurses move things around while her back his turned."

She caught the tail end of the introduction, nodding her head to Wilson and looking more than a little harried as she thrust the file toward House. "Seven-year-old presenting with an ear infection," she began.

House waved off any further explanation and scrawled an initial next to her observations. "She doesn't always look behind her before she starts walking somewhere," he explained to Wilson, not bothering to look at the girl. "That's the fifth time she's knocked that stand over. She missed it once, but I think the nurse felt sorry for her and left it too far away. I started paying them more after that."

With a frustrated sigh, she snatched the chart up from him and disappeared back around the corner into the exam room.

"I think we're getting along well," House said with more than a little amusement.

"Why don't you go start with the next patient," Wilson suggested to Brown. "I'll be there in a few minutes." The younger man nodded and hurried off down the hall.

"You know, they're not students anymore," House observed. "They can do things on their own without someone standing beside them to hold their hands."

"They were considered students until this morning when they reported for work. It's their first day, in a new hospital for most of them, and they don't know where anything is. I figure that for the first day, it's just as easy to treat them like students and ease them into things before the residents get a chance at them," Wilson told House. "You have different plans?"

"There's no sense coddling them. It's a dog-eat-dog world. They'll either sink or they'll learn to swim."

"Aside from the fact that you mixed your metaphors there…"

"Doctor House," Verhoeven called from inside the exam room.

"Remember what I told you?" House yelled back to her with a sigh. "If she can't handle an ear infection on her own, she at least has to come out to me," he explained to Wilson. "Privilege of rank."

"Are you sure you're not playing the cripple card again?"

House looked up at Wilson critically. "You think that I would do something like that?"

"Why not? You've done it to students before without even blinking. Have you suddenly found a sense of…"

"Nope, I'll use it again."

"Then why not with this one?'

House didn't bother to answer, instead watching for Wilson's reaction as Verhoeven made her way into the hall to speak with them. Coming all the way out into the hallway so that she could speak with House out of hearing of those in the exam room, she again nodded polite acknowledgement to Wilson. "Three-year-old with a positive Babinski and nystagmus," she told House, who looked disappointed as Wilson kept a carefully neutral expression on his face, avoiding more than an initial surprised glance down at her crutch. "His temperature is normal," Verhoeven continued, "but his sister said that he had been running a fever last week. Negative Brudzinski and Kernig signs, so there is no indication of meningitis."

House lowered his TV as his interest was piqued. "You're sure it was positive?" he asked.

Verhoeven bit her lower lip a little uncertainly, but she nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Wait a minute," Wilson said. "There's a seven-year-old and a three-year-old here with a sister and not a parent?"

"It's a single-parent household and the mother is at home with a migraine and the two other children," she reported. "These two are here with their twelve-year-old sister."

House quirked his head with some interest and picked up his cane from where he'd rested it against the wall. "It appears as though enforced hand-holding may have some benefits after all," he noted.

"Yes, well, I should be catching up with my own intern," Wilson replied, hurrying off down the hall.

------------------------------

"You admitted a kid without parental consent for a fever that's gone away?" Foreman asked, surprise evident on his face.

"No," House answered, rolling his eyes. "I admitted a kid for classic signs of an unidentified neurological disorder. You're the neurologist, Foreman, I thought you would have been on this one like white on rice." He started scrawling the list of symptoms up on the board.

"Nystagmus, positive Babinski, history of fever," Cameron read out. "Possible ties to inner ear infections and maternal migraine headaches."

"The uncontrolled eye movements could be residual from an inner ear infection," Foreman pointed out. "Which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what the brother was just diagnosed with."

"And the Babinski?" House demanded. "Are you just going to ignore that one?"

"Are you sure it was positive?" Foreman inquired. "I mean, we all made some pretty stupid mistakes back when we were interns and the kid is only three."

"I repeated the test," House told him, "and unless you think that I'm incompetent enough to make the same mistake and want to go and repeat it for yourself…"

"What about the other kid?" Cameron asked, cutting House off in an effort to keep the peace.

"Couldn't find anything but an ear infection. I sent him home with the sister, but they'll probably be back soon with the mother," House answered.

"You think the ear infection might be related to whatever this kid has and you still let them go home?" Cameron questioned in surprise.

House shrugged. "Maybe it's related. Maybe it's not."

"There were no indications of meningitis?" Chase questioned.

"Negative Brudzinski and Kernig," House reported. "But I'm pretty sure I said that already. Can we move on now, or do you need me to say it again?" He paused for as second, then added, "Good. If you need me, I'll be down in the clinic, hand-holding."

------------------------------

"You're actually leaving the three of them alone to figure this one out?" Wilson questioned, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sinking down into one of the other chairs in the oncology lounge.

"And you left your intern unattended for long enough to drink a cup of coffee," House observed sharply.

"He's getting a late lunch up in the cafeteria," Wilson admitted.

"Giving an intern a break for lunch," House mused, "what a novel idea!"

"Why? What's your intern doing?"

"Catching up on all the clinic house I missed this month," House answered. "What? Someone's got to do it and it isn't going to be me."

"You've had her in the clinic since she started four hours ago," Wilson said, looking down at his watch. "You weren't planning to give her a break? Maybe a tour of things?"

House shrugged. "Depends how generous I'm feeling. I stopped paying the nurses to move the trays, if that means anything."

"Did you get bored with it? Or did you just run out of money?"

"I'm hurt," House replied. "Although it was amusing, I wasn't doing it for my own enjoyment.'

Wilson rolled his eyes in disbelief. "I'm sure your reasons were entirely altruistic."

"Why else would I have kept doing it after Cuddy gave me permission?"

"Cuddy gave you permission?" Wilson repeated in surprise.

"Well, first she came out to yell and make me explain exactly what I thought I was doing. Then she gave me permission to continue. Sort of."

"She actually gave you permission to torment your intern?"

------------------------------

"Where's Cameron?" Foreman asked, looking up from the journal in his lap as Chase returned to the office from examining the boy.

"The mom's still not here," Chase answered. "The little boy is scared and Cameron stayed in there with him."

"It's been like an hour and a half," Foreman noted. "Where's the mom?"

"It's been more like two hours since the other kids were sent home," Chase corrected. "Even if they had to go across town and back on the bus, someone still should have been here by now."

"Maybe the mom's trying to find a babysitter for the other kids?" Foreman suggested.

"She sent a twelve-year-old here with a three-year-old and a sick seven-year-old," Chase reminded him. "You don't think it's strange that someone's not here?"

------------------------------

"The mom's still not here."

"Which mom would that be?" House asked. "And more to the point, why do I care?"

"The three-year-old you admitted earlier. His mom's still not here," Cameron told him.

"And this is supposed to concern me?" House inquired, turning another page in his magazine.

"It's been close to three hours since we admitted him."

"And?"

"You don't think it's strange that a mom wouldn't rush to the hospital to be with her three-year-old?"

"You don't this it's strange that a mom would send her kids to a walk-in clinic under the care of a twelve-year-old?" House countered, flipping another page.

"I tried calling," Cameron said, "but the number was out of service. I called the phone company and they're doing repairs to the lines in the area."

"And you want me to do what about it? Fix the phone lines myself?"

"I…"

House rolled his eyes and folded up his magazine. "Go track the mother down," he instructed, pushing himself to his feet. "Take Foreman and Chase with you."

"What about Peter? He's alone and he's scared. We've been in there playing games with him."

"I'm ready for another break," House told her.

"You're going to go and sit with a patient?" Cameron asked in surprise.

"No," House answered. "I'm going to go hang out in the cafeteria. Verhoeven can sit with him. She's already caught me up on my clinic duty this month and I don't want Cuddy to start assigning Verhoeven her own hours yet."

------------------------------

"I feel sorry for her," Foreman said as the three fellows walked through the parking garage toward his car. "I mean, he's miserable to us most of the time, but…"

"But we just work for him?" Cameron finished.

Forman nodded.

"I'm surprised he didn't just pass her off onto one of us," Chase observed.

"Yeah, but then she wouldn't do his clinic hours for him," Foreman replied. "We'll have to do the stuff he doesn't want to do"

"We'll definitely have to supervise the overnight rotations," Chase answered. "When's the last time you saw him here all night with a patient?"

"The last time we paged him in for an emergency," Foreman laughed. "He's got tenure and he's got us. Unless he's really interested, why would he need to be here at night?"

------------------------------

"Come on," House said, sticking his head into the exam room. "Enough clinic duty for today."

"I'm almost…"

House looked the patient up and down, interrupting her. "What's your problem?" he demanded bluntly of the patient.

"My feet hurt," the man complained.

"Any new exercise programs?"

"Not lately."

"Spend a lot of time on your feet?"

"No."

"Any exercise at all?"

"Not lately, but I just got…"

"Do some exercise and buy a new pair of shoes. Those ones are too tight and they're cutting off the circulation to your feet; that's why they hurt," House stated. "Now, Doctor Verhoeven, you're with me."

She obeyed, wordlessly following him out of the exam room. "Doctor House," she said softly once the door had closed behind them, "he has a family history of both diabetes and heart disease, either of which could cause decreased circulation and foot problems."

"If he was diabetic, he'd be in ketoacidosis by now," House countered impatiently. "He had two empty candy wrappers sticking out of his jacket pocket and he gets no exercise. Did you smell ketones?"

"No, but…"

"No diabetes then. And as for heart disease, did you use that fancy stethoscope of yours? Or does it just make for a good accessory with the lab coat?"

"Good breath sounds bilaterally," she reported. "And no abnormal heart rhythms."

"His fingers showed no signs of clubbing and he wasn't complaining of any chest pain or tightness," House told her. "He might have heart disease, but it won't kill him yet. We can't diagnose something if we don't have any signs. Remember that."

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"And don't be so polite," House noted. "I can't decide whether the constant deference is a refreshing change or just irritating."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Okay, that's just irritating," he decided as they passed out through the man clinic doors out into the hall.

"I'll keep that in mind," she answered quietly.

"Hmm, sass from the new girl. Now that is a change, refreshing or otherwise."

"I'm…"

"Remember what I just said about irritating?"

------------------------------

"This is the kid we admitted earlier. I sent everyone else off to find the mother, but the kid is scared and someone needs to sit with him," House told her, stopping outside he boy's room.

"You would like me to _sit _with him?" Verhoeven asked. House had had her shuffled from patient to patient in the clinic all day so far. Sitting down was something that she'd almost given up on.

"Well, Cuddy might get suspicious if I'm checked into the clinic for more than three hours than what I was scheduled," House relied. "And although it'd be great to have you finish off all my hours for the month right now, there's still another week left to go."

"So I am just to sit with him until his mother arrives?" she repeated, still looking for the trick. She couldn't believe that it would be that easy.

"Essentially," House told her. "We can't really do anything until the mother arrives and gives us permission."

"All right."

"Oh," House told her as he turned to start walking away, "and while you're sitting with him, you might as well start a work-up. You wouldn't want to get bored."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to watch the big TV in the cafeteria," he interjected. "As soon as the mother gets here, get the kid in for an MRI right away."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, and you'll probably want to get a lumbar puncture. Get a nurse to hold the kid down if the mother doesn't get here in the next half hour or so," House directed, continuing on his way. "If anyone asks, it's to rule out meningitis."

"Should I page you?" she questioned.

"Only if you find something interesting," he called back over his shoulder.

------------------------------

"Mommy?"

"She is on her way," Verhoeven assured the boy as she came into the room. "But until then, I'm going to stay with you and check a few things. Is that okay with you?"

"I want Mommy."

"I know," she told him, sitting down at his bedside, "but until she gets here, how about I stay with you? My name is Katrien."

He sat, studying her and playing with his stuffed animal while he considered it. "I'm Peter," he said after a moment. "How come you got a cane?"

------------------------------

"I don't think it's nystagmus."

House sighed and turned around to stare at Verhoeven. "Commercial break is in two minutes. You couldn't have waited until then?"

"I don't think it's jus nystagmus," she repeated. "He fell asleep a few minutes ago and the twitching continued. If it were simple, the movement should have stopped when he fell asleep."

House sighed and turned away from the cafeteria TV screen. "Since it's obvious that you're not going to wait until my show is over, you might as well talk."

"Nystagmus wouldn't…"

"You said that already," House broke in impatiently. "If it's not nystagmus, then what is it?"

"It could be localized mild continuous seizures," she suggested uncertainly.

"Kozhevnikov's," House mused. "That's a nice zebra you've got there." He paused for a moment, thinking.

"Or it could…"

"No," House said. "I like it. What do you want to do about it?"

She bit down on her lower lip for a moment, thinking.

"Hadn't quite gotten that far yet?"

"The treatment depends upon the underlying cause," she stated softly. "I guess we would begin with an MRI, an EEG, and a CT scan."

"Good for starters. What else?"

"CBC, chem-7, and a tox screen," she said.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" House questioned, turning back to catch the last few minutes of his soap.

------------------------------

"Not the greatest neighbourhood, is it?" Chase observed, looking around at the shabby townhouses crowded together.

"What do you expect from a single mother raising five kids alone?" Foreman demanded. "Can't be an easy life."

"This is the address," Cameron interjected, trying to cut off the impending argument. "217-B," she read, checking the paper one more time.

"What are we waiting for?" Foreman asked, starting up the stairs toward the door.

"Keep an eye out for anything unusual," Chase cautioned him. "Might save a repeat trip back, because you know he's going to ask."

"You mean that it might save me from having to break in later?" Foreman joked caustically, knocking on the door. There was no answer, so he knocked harder, turning around to look at the other two standing at the foot of the stairs. Still nothing.

"You think they could have left already and we just missed them?" Cameron asked.

"Maybe," Chase said. "Or maybe the entire family is collapsed on the floor dieing."

Foreman sighed and rolled his eyes. "You're just dieing for me to jimmy the door and find out, aren't you?" he demanded. "But before I commit yet another break and enter in the name of medicine, I'm at least going to phone the hospital and find out if the mother's shown up." He dug out his cell phone and dialed the number.

"Foreman?" House questioned as he answered the phone. "Where the hell are you? You left an hour ago."

"We got stuck in traffic," he explained, rolling his eyes. "But we're at the house now. There's no answer at the door, so we were wondering if…"

"No sign of anyone yet. But the eye thing has potentially become more interesting. Get the mother here so we can start testing."

Foreman sighed and flipped his cell phone closed. "He hung up," he reported testily to the others. "But only after telling me to get the mother so that he can start testing."

"Still no answer at the door," Chase reported, not bothering to hide his amusement.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Foreman demanded without humour. "Let's send old Foreman off to break into the place." He dug into his wallet for a credit card. "We'll try it this way first and figure something else out if this doesn't work."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to try the knob first?" Cameron suggested, raising her eyebrows.

"Why would he door be left open in a neighbourhood like this?" Foreman scoffed, shaking his head. "I don't leave my doors unlocked and I live in a building with a doorman."

"Fine, I'll try the door then," she stated, pushing through and grabbing the doorknob. It turned freely and the door swung open. "How about that?" she laughed, turning to gloat.

Foreman shook his head and put his credit card back in his wallet. "Hello?" he called into the dim hall, brushing past Cameron. "Anyone home?"

"Doesn't sound like anyone's home," Chase observed, looking down at the darkened hall.

"Yeah, but we've got five pairs of shoes and a space left for the missing one," Cameron said, pointing out the row of shoes neatly aligned along the wall near the door.

"Trust the woman to go for the shoes," Foreman quipped, continuing on down the hall to the first doorway.

"Hello?" Chase called again, opening a door to an empty room.

"Shh…" a quiet voice called as a door opened further down the hall. "Mommy's sleeping."

The three doctors hurried down the hall. "We're doctors from the hospital where you brother is," Cameron explained. "We really need your mom to come down to the hospital."

There was a slight scuffle and the first child disappeared back into the room as an older girl appeared in the doorway. "You're not the same doctors as before," she stated suspiciously, standing with her hands on her hips and blocking the doorway. It was obvious she was the same girl that had come to the hospital earlier.

"No," Chase told her, "they're both still at the hospital with your brother, but we came here to get your mom. We need her to sign some forms before we can start figuring out what's wrong with your brother."

"She took some of her pills," the girl reported, "and she's sleeping. She gets sick when we wake her up. I was going to tell her and we were going to come in as soon as she woke up. I got the little kids dressed and ready to go and everything."

"It's really important that we wake her up and bring her to the hospital," Chase stated. "Either you can go wake her up, or we can."

"I'll do it," the girl said, sliding past the three doctors and down the hall. As soon as she was gone, the other children in the room crowded around to peer out the doorway at the three strangers suddenly standing in their hallway.

------------------------------

"Why isn't Mommy here?" the boy whimpered, staring down at the needle in his arm as blood filled the tube. Tears rolled down his face.

"She is on her way," Verhoeven assured the boy, trying to distract him so that she could finish drawing the blood they needed for the tests.

"You said that before an' she's still not here," the boy cried, hugging his bear tightly to him with his free arm. "Why isn't she here?"

"She is coming as soon as she can," Verhoeven repeated awkwardly, switching out one vial for another.

"I want Mommy," he sobbed, trying to pull away.

"I know," she assured him, grabbing his hands to stop him from pulling out the needle.

"What's your bear's name?" she asked, hoping to distract him.

"He's Peter, like me," he told her, still trying to squirm away from her. "So he doesn't get mixed up."

"How would he get mixed up?" she inquired. The vial was almost full; she just had to get him to sit still for another couple of minutes.

"They take him away," he sniffed, wiping his tears on his bear's head. "His name's the same as mine so he 'members to come back."

"And does he?"

"Mm-hmm," Peter said, crying harder as she removed the vial and pulled out the needle.

------------------------------

"It's been five minutes," Chase noted, looking down at his watch. "Do you think we should go see what's going on?" The three doctors were leaning against the wall out in the hallway while the kids played, still watching the strangers carefully. The oldest girl, having returned from waking the mother, was quite clearly watching them, making no pretence at doing other things.

"I got us in," Foreman pointed out quietly. "One of you can go."

"Actually," Cameron corrected, "I got us in. But I'll go anyway."

"Hey," the girl called, seeing Cameron heading off down the hall, "where's she going?" She jumped to her feet, ready to race off after Cameron.

"She's just going to see how your mom's doing," Chase explained. "She wants to make sure that she understands what's going on with your brother. It's really important."

The girl reluctantly sat back down, unable to argue with that. "Is Peter really sick?" she asked quietly. "He was okay when we left."

"Nothing's happened since you left," Foreman assured her, "but he's sick and we're not sure what's wrong. But we can't start figuring it out until your mom gets to the hospital."

"I was going to bring her as soon as she woke up," the girl repeated. "But if we wake her up when she's taken her medicine, then she gets sick." She sounded miserable and guilty. "She was supposed to take Michael to the clinic today, but then she got one of her headaches. And Michael wouldn't stop crying 'cause his ear hurt."

"It's okay," Chase assured her. "It's good that you brought them in. If you hadn't you might not have known there was anything wrong with Peter.

"Okay," she sniffed, but it was apparent that she didn't quite believe him.

------------------------------

"Did you stop off to get a burger or something?" House demanded irritably, having been forced to phone Foreman to determine where they were.

Cameron, who'd answered the phone so that Foreman could keep his eyes on the road, sighed. "We got stuck in traffic again."

"How long before I can finally start running tests on the kid legitimately?"

"We're pulling into the parking garage now," Cameron informed him, looking down the block at the hospital. So what if they weren't quite there yet. The extra few minutes wouldn't mean anything.

"Then go and get me a burger before you come back," House directed. "No pickles."

"What?"

"You can't bring the mother in here now," House answered, listening to the little boy's cries through the glass door. "Give us another ten minutes. Tie her up with paperwork if you have to."

"Why?"

"If you would have shown up when you were supposed to, we wouldn't have had this problem," House snapped. It was taking two nurses to hold the terrified kid down and immobile. "We just started a spinal tap."

"Okay," Cameron said, conscious of the mother in the front seat and the kid sitting on her lap. "I'll make sure we fill in that paperwork downstairs right away then."

"You idiot!" House burst out. "Cuddy's downstairs. If she sees you, she'll know I'm doing tests I'm not supposed to."

"Fine," Cameron sighed. "Your office?"

"Just don't bring her anywhere near Paediatrics until I page you," House ordered, hanging up on her.

"Are you sure she needs to fill them out immediately?" Cameron questioned, feigning the conversation for the sake of the mother. "Okay, I know you'd rather have her in to see him right away, but…"

"Yeah, thanks for trying," she went on as Chase stared at her in disbelief, peering around the kid in his lap. "Bye," she added, finally hanging up her end of the call.

"House?" Chase had to ask. He'd been sure it was House from the first exchange, but then that last bit hadn't sounded anything like House.

"Yeah," Cameron answered. "Ms Parker, unfortunately we're going to have to take you to fill out a bunch of paperwork before you can see Peter. There's admission paperwork and permissions for testing that we have to get right away."

"And I can't even see him first?" she demanded.

"He's…"

"He's already been admitted for a few hours and these papers should have been filled out then," Chase supplied, trying to help Cameron out. "We'll get you in to see your son as soon as we possibly can."

---------------------

"Took you long enough. Did you get it?" House demanded as Verhoeven finally emerged back out into the hallway.

She nodded tightly, holding up the vial of fluid. "It took three tries," she told him, her voice choked up as she listened to the whimpers still coming from the room behind her.

"Get it to the lab. The mother finally got here ten minutes ago."

"Where is she?" Verhoeven asked. "He was terrified; it would have been much easier for him had she been in with him."

"How would you feel if you came in and saw nurses holding your screaming kid down while a doctor poked uncertainly around his spine with a big needle?"

"We could have waited, put off the procedure for a few minutes."

House shrugged. "We'd already waited too long if he does wind up having meningitis. She's filling out paperwork or something equally as useless. I'm sure there'll be some sort of a joyful reunion when she's finally let up here."

"This should get to the lab," Verhoeven said softly, looking down at the vial in her hands and not meeting House's eyes.

"Well, what are you waiting for then?" House sighed, rolling his eyes.

---------------------

"What did you find out?" Foreman asked, watching through the glass walls as the family crowded around the boy's bed.

"Don't you even care about the boy?" House questioned in return, looking at Foreman in feigned shock.

"His name is Peter, by the way," Cameron informed House.

"His name is actually Peter Parker?" House couldn't help but laugh.

"Hey," Chase couldn't resist quipping, "'with great power comes great responsibility.' Maybe we should check him for spider bites." Since the whole Vogler thing, he'd been trying to fly below the radar as much as possible. It was only now, after a few months had passed, that he was finally starting to come out of his shell and back to his pre-Vogler self.

Cameron rolled her eyes. "I think it's cute. I bet he has Spiderman pyjamas at home somewhere."

"Cute?" House repeated, wrinkling his forehead in disgust. "Could something 'cute' go head-to-head with someone like Doc Oc?"

"Or the Green Goblin?" Foreman questioned.

"Don't forget Venom," Chase added.

"Mysterio."

"The Lizard.'

"The Hobgoblin."

Cameron stayed out of it, rolling her eyes again as the three men eagerly traded the names of comic book villains back and forth, acting more like children than doctors.

------------------------------------------


	3. Act II

-----------------------------------------

"Did Doctor Chase go home?" Verhoeven asked, rubbing her eyes tiredly as she saw Foreman coming down the hall toward her.

"Yeah, we switched off an hour or so ago and he went home to sleep," Foreman answered sipping his coffee. "Any change?"

"For Peter? None, sir," she told him. "But the other patients up and down the hall have been much more demanding." She sighed and shook her head. "I think that I could settle for a little boredom."

Foreman laughed. "I remember that feeling. And don't bother with the 'sir.' It makes me feel like I'm sixty."

She smiled half-heartedly at him, smothering a yawn. "I should check on Peter" she said. "Despite my best efforts it has been a few hours since I've had the chance."

"He's right across from the nurses' station," Foreman reminded her. "And the nurses keep a pretty close eye on things. Don't worry about it so much. It's your first night on-call, unfortunately you're supposed to be completely overwhelmed."

"I don't know whether that is reassuring or not," she replied.

"You're doing okay," Foreman assured her.

She nodded and started toward Peter's room, but she didn't get much more than two steps before her pager went off. "I think Doctor House must have told the nurses I was to cover this floor," she noted. "There is overflow for both post-surgical and paediatric cases and I have yet to see anyone from either service."

"Well, I'll check on Peter while you answer that page," Foreman told her, setting his cup down on the nurses' station and heading toward the boy's room.

---------------------

"Your daughter's temperature is normal," Verhoeven assured the anxious mother with a sight as the young girl rolled over and went immediately back to sleep. This was the fourth time she'd been paged here to take the same girl's temperature. Apparently the mother didn't trust the nurses.

"Are you sure?" the mother asked, wringing her hands anxiously. "You didn't even use a thermometer."

"Her temperature is completely normal," Verhoeven repeated, starting to back away toward the door. "Right now, even if she did have a bit of a temperature – which she doesn't – it would be better for her to get some rest and recover some of her strength."

"Are you sure?" the mother questioned again, smoothing her daughter's hair back from her forehead.

Verhoeven was saved from having to reassure the mother again by the page. "I am sure," she said simply as she checked the display. It was Peter's room.

She hurried down the hall as fast as she could manage, swinging into Peter's room. "What's wrong?" she demanded breathlessly.

"He's seizing," one of the nurses told her, holding Peter rolled onto his side. "Started about a minute ago. What do you want us to do?"

Verhoeven hesitated, frozen. "Did you page Doctor Foreman?" she questioned. He'd checked on Peter about an hour ago and then had gone up to grab a snack from the vending machines in the cafeteria.

"He's aspirating," the second nurse announced, grabbing the suction tube and slipping it between Peter's lips. "Doctor, what do you want us to do?"

Verhoeven stood with her eyes round, watching Peter's limbs twitching. "Doctor!" the first nurse said firmly.

"Phenobarbitol," she said after another second. "Draw fifty milligrams of phenobarbitol."

The first nurse stepped away from Peter to draw the medication, handing the needle to Verhoeven. "Fifty milligrams phenobarbitol," the nurse told her crisply.

With another slight hesitation, Verhoeven pressed the needle into the open IV port, depressing the plunger and sending the medication into the little boy's body. "Phenobarbitol onboard," Verhoeven reported, tossing the syringe onto the empty bedside table and moving to press her fingers to his carotid, wishing that he'd been hooked up to heart leads. He hadn't needed them before, so manually was the only way to track his heart rate at the moment.

"Coming up on about two minutes," one of the two nurses declared.

"Page Doctor Foreman again," Verhoeven ordered, completely losing track. All she knew was that for the moment his heart was still beating. "And another fifty milligrams of phenobarbitol. Stat." This time her order was more confident.

The drug was hurriedly drawn as the seizing continued. "Please work," Verhoeven muttered, sending the drug coursing through into the boy's veins.

Hurried footsteps came down the hall as the seizing finally slowed, Peter's formerly twitching body relaxing limply to the bed. "What happened?" Foreman demanded, appearing in the doorway, his pager going off in his hand.

---------------------

"What are you doing?" House demanded, barging into the dim room. "You didn't answer my page."

"My pager hasn't gone off, sir," she protested, twisting to look at him, but keeping her legs stretched out along the couch, a blanket covering them.

"Fine," House admitted, flipping the light on. "I hadn't paged you yet. It's actually what I was coming in here to do."

"Is there something wrong?" she questioned immediately, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the suddenly increased light levels.

"No," House told her, coming into the room and settling himself on a chair. "But no one had seen you in twenty minutes and I wanted to make sure you hadn't slipped off somewhere to sleep."

"No sleeping, sir," she assured him with a smile.

"And no coming to attention," House observed, watching her carefully. "Not even when you thought there might be something wrong with Spidey."

"Is Peter alright?" she questioned.

"No change," House replied dismissively. "What interests me more at the moment is why you've suddenly dispensed with one of the formalities and why you vanished into a dark room instead of going to eat lunch."

"Maybe I just don't like cafeteria food," she proposed.

"Occam's Razor," House told her, fishing out his bottle of Vicodin. "The simplest explanation is usually the best. The two things are related, the only question is how." He thoughtfully shook a pill out into his hand, tossing it back and swallowing it dry.

"I don't like cafeteria food, sir," she asserted.

"I wasn't disputing that fact," House replied. "Nobody really likes cafeteria food, and especially not the stroganoff. But that's not the real reason. After all, you were here almost all night and all of yesterday without eating…" He was just warming up to the subject and would have continued, but his pager went off, interrupting his train of thought.

Verhoeven's pager went off the next minute and she twisted to reach the pager off the table in front of the couch. As she did, the blanket slipped down, landing in a pile on the floor.

"Labs are finally in," House read, getting to his feet and glancing over at Verhoeven. "Nice legs," he remarked, making no effort not to look.

Verhoeven blushed deeply at the comment, tugging the hem of her skirt down lower, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she awkwardly swung her legs off the couch and clipped the pager back to the waistband of her skirt.

"Catch," House said suddenly, tossing his bottle of pills across the room to her. She fumbled the catch and the bottle landed on the couch beside her, causing House to roll his eyes. "Take one, give it a few minutes to kick in, and bring the bottle back to me," he directed. "I'll be in the lab."

She picked up the bottle, but continued to her feet, slipping her arm through her crutch and limping the few steps toward House, leaning heavily on the crutch and holding the bottle out to him. "I'm fine, sir," she asserted stubbornly.

"Sit down and take the damn pill," he growled, ignoring her and striding out of the room. "I don't want to see you again for at least another ten minutes. And I know how many are in the bottle."

She sighed, obeying his directive to sit a little too quickly to feign reluctance.

"The brace is a nice accessory, by the way," House added just before the door closed behind him. "Goes well with the crutch."

---------------------

"His white count was up, so he either has an infection or has had one recently," Chase said. "Spinal fluid was negative for meningitis. Lyme disease, maybe?"

"No sign of a rash," Cameron replied, flipping through the lab reports. "So it can't be Lyme disease."

"Lyme disease is as close as we get to Russian spring-summer fever here," Chase pointed out. "That's the major cause of the continuous seizures."

"Encephalitis can cause Kozhevnikov's too," House reminded them. "Besides, as last night proved, it's not just Kozhevnikov's but also full blown seizure activity."

"Lyme disease can cause acute disseminated encephalomyelitis," Chase asserted. "And that explains everything."

"Echo 11 and cat scratch cause ADE too," Foreman told him. "And most cases never have a cause pinned down."

"So we don't treat the underlying cause," House declared. "We treat the symptoms. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis… Chase, start him on IVIG. Four hundred milligrams per kilo for five days."

Methylprednisolone is a more effective treatment," Foreman said.

"Yeah, but what interferes with methylprednisolone?" House questioned. "Anyone?"

"Phenobarbitol?" Verhoeven said uncertainly. After the ten minutes proscribed by House, she'd made her way to the lab, finding the four older doctors already actively engaged in diagnostic speculation.

"Right in one. And what did we give the kid to stop the seizures? Phenobarbitol. Besides, methylprednisolone can cause seizures, which is the last thing we want to do in a kid already having them. Chase, start the IVIG."

"Aren't we going to try and find out what's behind the encephalomyelitis?" Verhoeven questioned. "If it was contagious, his brothers and sisters could have caught it."

"Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis can take up to two weeks to develop," Cameron noted.

"Fine," House said. "Chase, start the IVIG. Cameron, you and Foreman examine the rest of the kids and see what you find."

The three stood up, hurrying out of the room on their different tasks. "Verhoeven," House started.

"Yes, sir?" she replied.

"You ordered the phenobarbitol last night, right?" House asked.

"Yes, sir," she answered softly, her gaze drifting to the floor.

"Why not diazipan?" he inquired sharply. "It should always be the first call for stopping grand mal seizures unless there's some underlying condition."

She blushed deeply as she admitted, "I couldn't remember the paediatric dosing for diazipan, sir, but I knew it for phenobarbitol." She was clearly apprehensive, not sure what to expect. It was a big mistake and one that she shouldn't have made.

House stayed silent for a moment, staring at her and letting her worry. "Learn it," he directed her sternly after a moment.

"Yes, sir," she responded immediately, her relief showing on her face.

---------------------

"Doctor House," Cuddy stated, coming up behind him, "shouldn't you be catching up on your charting, seeing as you're here on a Saturday?"

"I'm taking a break," he declared, turning from his pyramid of fruit cups to glare irritably at her.

"So I see," Cuddy replied. "But when I asked, 'Shouldn't you be catching up on your charting?' I wasn't really asking so much as I was…"

"Pontificating?" House suggested. "Analyzing? Bloviating?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of haranguing," she snapped.

"Of course, I would love to detail every second of my clinic duty, healing the sick and dealing with their whiny parents, but unfortunately I'm busy," House told her.

"Building towers with fruit cups stolen from the cafeteria does not count as busy," Cuddy informed him irritably. "And you're three weeks behind on your charting."

"Four," House corrected. "I haven't done any this week either."

"Do it," she ordered, turning on her heel.

"Or what?" he challenged. "You'll pull me off clinic duty? I don't know how I could live without the validation the clinic provides. It would just make me feel…"

"How about you do it or I pull your authorization again?" Cuddy countered, facing him with a steady glare.

"Goody, if you did that, then you could take away my intern too. There's no sense in keeping her around if you won't let me do anything."

"Not that simple," Cuddy replied, crossing her arms over her chest. "If I pull your authorization, I'll triple your clinic time, just so that you can make sure your intern isn't bored."

House turned back around to stack the last of the fruit cups on the top of his structre. "_Magnifique,_" he stated, stepping back to evaluate his masterpiece. "Now that I've finished the _tour des fruits, _where's the tower of charts?" he questioned with a heavy sigh.

---------------------

"We finished examining the rest of the Parkers," Cameron told House, entering the office and crossing immediately over to refill her cup from the coffee pot.

"And?" House prompted, throwing down his pen, eager to abandon his charting.

"The previously diagnosed inner ear infection and not much else," Foreman replied, joining the two in the conference room. "Mom has a history of migraines and two of the kids should be checked out for minor cases of asthma."

"No family history of seizures, epilepsy, or anything else," Cameron added.

"Everyone has a family history of something," House declared. "What's she lying about?"

"We pulled the medical records for all the kids before we examined them," Foreman said. "If there's something in the history, it's not in those files."

"What about the father?" House questioned.

Cameron shook her head. "Also clean so far as we can tell."

"Someone's hiding something," House restated. "But why? And, more interestingly, why?"

"It doesn't matter," Foreman told him. "Chase said that Peter's already responding to the IVIG."

---------------------

"When did the elevator go out?" House questioned, concentrating more on the up and down motion of his yo-yo than on the answer to his question.

"I'm not sure, sir," Verhoeven answered. "It was out when I arrived at six. But Peter seems to be responding well to the IVIG. His EEG from last night showed normal activity."

House didn't bother to reply. On a Monday morning, the answer wasn't worth even a nod. Midway through treatment, they expected Peter to be responding; they would have changed the treatment if he hadn't been. The question about the elevator had been small talk about an excuse to still be upstairs when he should have been in the clinic seeing patients. And for a change it was an excuse that Cuddy couldn't argue with; it was her hospital and her broken elevator.

The two waited for another moment or two in silence, prematurely employing standard elevator etiquette. "Katrien?" a voice carried down the hall to them.

Verhoeven looked confused for a moment before turning her head to look down the hall in the direction of the voice's origin. But then it only took her a second to recognize the figure hurrying towards them. "Doctor Griffiths?" she questioned, almost as if she were unwilling to trust what she was seeing. "What are you doing here?"

"I could be asking the same question of you, my dear," the older man replied, greeting her warmly, "but I can see by the coat and the overall air of exhaustion that you must be doing your internship here."

"This is Doctor Gregory House," she told the older man politely, gesturing slightly to House with the tip of her crutch, "my attending."

"Ah, Doctor House," Griffiths said, not allowing her to finish with a formal introduction. "It is a pleasure to put a face to the reputation." He looked at the yo-yo and the crutch but didn't offer his hand. He nodded instead, making it clear that he knew more than just House's medical reputation.

House nodded vaguely in reply, not taking his attention off the yo-yo, almost as though the up and down motion of the toy would hurry an empty elevator towards them.

"It's been too long since you've been into the office," Griffiths noted to Verhoeven. "But I can well remember the demands of medical school. Perhaps while I'm in town we can have something arranged so that you don't have to make the trip all the way out to Baltimore."

"There's the elevator," House interjected, pocketing his toy in one practiced motion. "You said your name was Griffiths?"

---------------------

"What do you know about Griffiths?" House demanded, leaning on his cane and regarding critically.

"Is this a trick question?" Wilson asked, looking up from his charts and appearing completely unsurprised to see House suddenly appear in his office doorway.

"No, I just want information. He's in Baltimore, so he's probably out of Hopkins," House elaborated. "What do you know about him?"

"Alistair Griffiths?"

"This conversation works much better if you would just answer my questions with – oh, I don't know – answers," House snapped.

"The man's a giant," Wilson replied with a sigh. "I'd be surprised if he weren't retired by now."

"Not helpful."

"I've only met him once," Wilson told House, "at an oncology conference a couple of years ago. He was lecturing on referred pain."

"I didn't ask for your personal history with the guy," House protested.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "He's a specialist in nerve damage and recover, among other things," he informed House. "He's done a lot of work with PPS patients and came up with the over-taxed nerve theory. But, like I said, I'm pretty sure he's retired by now."

"Wait a minute," House drawled, narrowing his eyes. "Is he the one that you and Cuddy tried to convince me to see after…"

"Yeah," Wilson cut him off. "He was one of the many that you were too stubborn to visit."

---------------------

"He's looking good, Ms Parker," Chase told her, folding his stethoscope and slipping it into the pocket of his lab coat. "He's responding well to the treatment, and none of the other children are showing any signs of the encephalomyelitis."

"That's good?" she questioned, stroking Peter's hair back from his forehead.

"That's very good," Cameron assured her, making a small note in Peter's chart. "Once he's done the treatment on Wednesday, we'll keep him overnight for observation, and he should be able to go home on Thursday."

"What about the seizures?" she questioned worriedly.

"We think they were caused by the inflammation," Chase answered. "He hasn't had any since the medication started taking effect and we discontinued all of the anti-convulsives late Saturday."

"So he'll be fine?"

"We have no reason to think that he won't be," Foreman spoke up, running his finger up the sole of Peter's foot and noting the reaction. "All of his tests are coming back normal."

---------------------

"Foreman," House called, "where are you going?"

Foreman sighed, rolling his eyes as he backtracked down the hall. He'd been hoping to slip out early and run some errands. "I was on my way home," he answered. "Cameron is on tonight, Peter's latest set of labs won't be back until morning, and…"

"And there's a Lakers' game on TV," House finished.

"Right," Foreman shot back. "I'm black, so I must love basketball."

"I saw you checking the Lakers' schedule last week," House replied calmly. "Although I'm not entirely sure of your reasons for liking…"

"Watch it," Foreman cautioned.

"I was going to say the Lakers," House protested, trying to assume a look of innocence. "The Knicks are a far superior team."

"What do you want?" Foreman demanded.

"You're a neurologist. What do you know about Alistair Griffiths?"

"He experimented with inducing neuron re-genesis for a while," Foreman answered. "He hadn't had much luck and then the funding for stem cell research was cut off. There hasn't been anything out of his lab since."

"What do you know about him as a doctor?" House asked after a slight pause.

Foreman shrugged. "He has an MD."

House rolled his eyes. "Brilliant observation. Now go away."

---------------------

"Has House seemed weird to you lately?" Foreman asked, taking a bite out of his sandwich.

"You mean weirder than normal?" Chase inquired, eyeing the rest of Foreman's fries hungrily. He usually packed his own lunch, not trusting the cafeteria.

"Yeah," Foreman replied, "weirder than usual."

"I think it's just because he has someone new to torment," Chase speculated. "He seems different to us because his attention is diverted."

"He was asking me questions about Alistair Griffiths," Foreman revealed. "Griffiths works with nerve damage."

"What do you think it means?" Chase questioned.

"Maybe he's looking for a consult on Peter," Foreman mused, noting Chase's gaze and putting a protective hand around his fries.

"Doesn't sound like House, unless it's some new way to get at us," Chase countered.

"I couldn't think of any other reason," Foreman admitted. "Why else would he want to know about Griffiths?"

"He's a nerve guy," Chase repeated thoughtfully. "Maybe House **is **looking for a consult."

"So it's a stupid idea when I suggest it, but when you do, it's a good one?" Foreman demanded.

"Not for Peter," Chase corrected. "Maybe it's for him."

---------------------

"Verhoeven," House called.

"Clinic?" she guessed.

"Cuddy's been on my back about regulations and the amount of time you've been spending here lately," House told her, rolling his eyes. "I keep telling her that I'm not forcing you to be here. But, more importantly, she's also getting suspicious about the timely and uncomplaining completion of my clinic hours."

"So what would you like me to do, sir?" she inquired.

"There's this little deli about ten blocks from here," House told her. "The cafeteria isn't serving anything I like to eat, and I usually go there."

"Reuben, no pickles," she recited, swapping her lab coat for a rain jacket. It had been pouring rain all day and an umbrella was hard manage with a crutch when other things had to be carried as well.

"Keep it dry," he instructed, looking at the rain coursing down the windowpane. "But don't worry about keeping it warm."

Once she'd left the room and disappeared down the hall, it took all of two minutes for House to empty all the pockets of Verhoeven's lab coat onto the table so he could go through them better.

"What are you doing?" Wilson asked from the doorway, looking on in shock as House poked through the various things he'd pulled out of the pockets.

"Spying," House replied, rolling his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"I came to see if you wanted to go to the cafeteria for lunch. They've got that pizza you like."

"I sent Verhoeven out to get me lunch," he informed Wilson.

"Why?"

"So that I could search her pockets," House answered. "Duh."

"Why?" Wilson repeated, taken aback.

"Chase has the thing with his dad and the double-cross with Vogler thing. Cameron has issues with her dead husband. Foreman has the criminal record…"

"Juvenile record," Wilson corrected. "None of which is any of your business, by the way."

House shrugged. "I wanted to find out what was up with this one."

"You mean aside from the obvious?" Wilson inquired.

"Are you going to help me or what?" House demanded. "I only have so much time here and I don't know what I'm going to find."

"I'm going to the cafeteria," Wilson answered, continuing down the hall. "Unlike you, I'm not driven by a morbid need to know everything about everyone I encounter."

House shrugged and returned to the pile of stuff. Interns seemed to carry around a disproportionate amount of stuff with them. Although most of it wasn't of any interest, there were a few intriguing papers tucked away between the pages of her various reference guides. And, of course, he had to open them all – patient notes, a few undecipherable lists written in Dutch, and…

"Pay dirt," House declared, pocketing the square of paper and hastily shoving the rest back into some semblance of order in her pockets.

---------------------

"What are you doing here?" Wilson asked. "I thought you were violating your intern's privacy."

"I've been done with that for a while. I'm waiting for you," House replied. "What else would I be doing sitting in your chair?"

"I don't know, but when have you ever needed a reason to do something you felt like doing?"

"Good point," House said. "Maybe I'll just stop bothering to come up with reasons for doing things. It'll save me the time to actually do them."

"What are you doing here?" Wilson questioned. "Aside from the obvious."

"I need you to write me a script."

"I wrote you one last week!" Wilson protested. "You can't be out already."

"It's not for me," House sighed, rolling his eyes.

"Then why can't you write it?"

"Because I'd need someone to prescribe it to," House answered. "Duh. Besides, it's better if my name is on the label. I need a reason to be carrying it around."

"That makes perfect sense. You need a prescription that's not for you, but that has to have your name on it," Wilson reiterated. "I understand completely. Especially the part where you can't just prescribe it for the person it's for."

House rolled his eyes again. "Just write the damn prescription. 50 mg tramadol."

Wilson reluctantly reached for his prescription pad. "Why the sudden switch in meds?"

"I told you," House protested, "they're not for me."

"Then who?" Wilson pressed.

"Verhoeven."

"You're prescribing yourself pain medication to give to your intern?" Wilson questioned, freezing in place.

"Write the dam prescription," House barked. "And I'm not prescribing them. I'm filling her standing prescription under another name."

"Aside from the legal implications… She has a standing script for tramadol?"

"That's what I just said. Now, are you going to write this or what?"

"If she has a standing script, then why do you need one?"

"Because she doesn't fill it."

"Is this one of those 'If they don't want treatment…' things?" Wilson asked, scrawling the order but looking as though it went against his better judgement.

House sighed and rolled his eyes again. "Just gimme."

"Not until you explain what's going on."

"She has a standing script for tramadol, has for years, but she's never filled it."

"And?"

House rolled his eyes. "And I'm doing a public service."

"You?" Wilson questioned with a laugh.

That earned the oncologist a piercing glare. "I haven't actually done any clinic work since she started and my last Vicodin hasn't started wearing off yet."

"So this is like moving the trays," Wilson noted, handing over the piece of paper. "Ostensibly for her own good, but really just for your personal amusement."

"What am I getting out of this, other than the third degree? Which, by the way, isn't exactly amusing."

"Why are you doing it then?" Wilson asked, crossing his arms over his chest and looking seriously at House.

House sighed. "You're the one who wrote the script," he said as he stood, intending to leave and hopefully avoid any further questions. "Why'd you do it?"

"Curiosity," Wilson admitted.

"You dispense pain meds every time you get curious?" House inquired. "I've got to get you curious more often."

"Come on, Greg," Wilson pleaded.

"Ooh, pulling out the first name," House remarked, stepping around Wilson and putting his hand on the door. "You shoulda tried that one earlier, Jimmy."

---------------------

Foreman wheeled Peter's chair out toward the taxi waiting at the curb. "Just keep a close eye on him for a few days," Foreman told her, "and bring him in for a check-up next week."

"Thank you so much," Ms Parker told him. "And all the other doctors too. Doctor Cameron was so nice about making sure the other kids had something to do. And Doctor Chase was so good with Peter. And Doctor Verhoeven was always only a call away."

"I'll make sure I tell them," Foreman assured her, shaking his head as she turned away to hand Peter's small bag to the cabby. Aside from the initial evaluation in the clinic, House hadn't had to see the patient the entire case.

---------------------

"I see you checked your patient out yesterday morning," Cuddy noted to House. "Not quite a week. That has to be a record for you."

"It wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be," House told her. "Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis presenting with Kozhevnikov's seizures. Cleared right up with a round of IVIG."

"You know, most people would find that a challenging case," Cuddy told him. "Most doctors go their entire careers without seeing a single case of Kozhevnikov's."

"Are you trying to compliment me?" House demanded. "Or are you attempting to gently point out that I'm easily bored." He reached out to knock over his latest pyramid of fruit cups.

"I was just making an observation," Cuddy protested. "Just like I'm observing that although you're still checked into the clinic, you're nowhere near it."

"I'm taking a break," House replied, restacking his fruit cup tower again and adding a few Jello cups to the base for interest.

"How many of those have you stolen from the cafeteria?" Cuddy questioned.

"None."

"None?" Cuddy repeated in disbelief. "Then where did you get them from?"

"I stole these from the patients," House told her with a grin.

---------------------

"It's been three weeks since anything interesting happened," House complained, blowing the wrapper off his straw at Wilson.

"It's only been four days sine you checked out your kid with the seizures," Wilson reminded him.

"That wasn't interesting," House declared, petulantly shoving his straw into his juice box.

"How old are you?" Wilson asked. "Five?"

House rolled his eyes. "I'm bored," he stated.

"The fruit cups aren't holding your attention anymore?"

"Cuddy took them away."

"And you're letting that stop you?"

"She said that for every fruit cup she caught me with that I wasn't actually eating, she'd give me another hour of clinic duty a week," House whined. "I tried building towers with them once the tops had been opened, but the tension in the wrapping was gone. And the empty containers were too light and fell over when anyone opened the door."

"Why do you care about clinic duty?" Wilson questioned. "You haven't actually done any since Verhoeven was assigned to you."

"Yeah, but sooner or later Cuddy is going to figure out my diabolical scheme and then I'll have to start doing my own hours again."

"Doctor House?" Verhoeven's soft voice floated in from the hall behind the two. "I was wondering if I could have a moment."

"Can't you see I'm busy?" House sighed.

"It's the Parkers," she told him.

"Ma or Pa?" Wilson quipped, motioning for Verhoeven to come in and take a seat.

"Peter again, sir," she answered, easing herself down into the offered seat. "His mother brought him in. He has a rash and is having trouble breathing."


	4. Act III

"Do you have any idea what kind of hours Katrien Verhoeven has been logging in the past week?" Cuddy demanded, crossing her arms angrily over her chest and planting herself firmly right in House's path.

"Can't say that I care," House retorted, trying to sidestep around her. Cuddy followed his motion, checking his advance and keeping him in place so that she could finish the conversation.

"Security tells me that she hasn't actually left the hospital in at least three days," Cuddy snapped at him, trying to impress the seriousness of the situation on him. "Tell me you're not making her stay on purpose."

"I'm not doing it on purpose," House parroted back, rolling his eyes. "Now, will you get out of my way?"

"Were you deliberately trying to break every labour rule we have, or did it just never occur to you that she was coming off night duty when she showed up at your morning diagnostic conferences?" Cuddy asked him, her temper flaring.

House just looked back at her blankly, his blue eyes unreadable. The boy's case was tricky, not that he ever got cases that weren't tricky. His condition had been up and down for the past three days, ever since he'd been re-admitted, and they weren't any closer to finding the underlying problem than they were then. A treatment would seem to be working at first, then rapidly it would start making things worse instead of better. He'd never taken the time to think about what kind of hours the people beneath him were working. The three fellows had gotten used to regulating their own hours and making sure they slept, but he'd completely forgotten that he now had an intern to worry about.

"Find her and send her home," Cuddy told him after a moment, her voice growing softer as she realized that he hadn't known about any of it. "And Chase too," she added. "He's been here almost as much as she has."

House nodded curtly. "Now will you get out of my way?" he requested, raising his eyebrows. This time, after another brief pause, Cuddy moved out of his way.

* * *

Both Chase and Verhoeven proved difficult to track down. They weren't in the patient's room, or the conference room, or in Cameron's usual haunt, the lab. House finally caught Chase sleeping on one of the couches in the oncology lounge, and the young Australian had scampered off eagerly, probably hoping to get away before House changed his mind and rescinded the order. 

Swallowing a Vicodin, House leaned back against the wall in an empty hall. They'd all been putting in long hours over the past few days and he honestly hadn't noticed that Chase and Verhoeven had been working almost around the clock. Chase should have known better, but he'd taken to the other blonde, foreign doctor, feeling some kind of need to act like an older brother figure. Verhoeven had probably been too intimidated to say anything, even as he assigned more work to her at each morning conference. In fact, he reflected, the assigned work was probably what had kept her from saying anything. She still had to find her backbone.

Sighing, he pushed himself upright and started off across the floor to his office. Finding her hadn't worked, so he'd page her. He could have done that from anywhere, but his iPod was in his desk drawer, and he wanted it on him in case he got called down to clinic duty. It probably would have just been easier to page both her and Chase from the outset, but the search had given him a convenient excuse to avoid the clinic for at least a while.

Halfway to his office, House caught sight of her at the far end of an intersecting hallway. Her crutch was unmistakable, and he almost physically winced to think that his cane performed the same identifying function for him. "Verhoeven," he barked loudly, his voice perhaps unnecessarily harsh as it echoed down the deserted hallway.

She startled, wheeling around abruptly. He saw what was about to happen seconds before it actually did, but was in no position to prevent it. She was exhausted, leaning heavily on the support of her crutch. As she turned, the rubber tip slipped on the polished floor, sliding out from beneath her and removing that support. Off balance and with nothing to support herself with, she crumpled to the ground, impacting it with a loud thump that did make House wince. It had been a hard fall.

She lay there in a heap for a moment, and House could hear her tightly regulated breathing as he hurried over to her. The perfectly timed breathing was supposed to be a strategy for coping with pain, but he'd never found it to be a very effective one. "You okay?" House inquired, fighting a highly inappropriate urge to prod her with the tip of his cane. It was, after all, partially his fault that she was on the floor in the first place.

"Fine," she answered shortly, very gingerly pushing herself up into a sitting position. Her white face and the thin line of her lips told him a different story, but who was he to argue? He did, however, raise a skeptical eyebrow as she immediately wrapped her arms around herself, guarding her ribs.

"Slide over against the wall," House instructed her, finding an appropriate use for his cane as he gestured with it. She obeyed, moving over a few feet so that she could lean back against the supportive surface. Ramrod straight posture, he noted. "When's the last time that you took anything?"

"Took..."

"You know what I mean."

"I'm not sure," she answered honestly, and perhaps a little breathlessly. "Some Tylenol I got from Doctor Chase an hour or so ago, I suppose."

House nodded once, fishing a prescription bottle out of his pocket and tossing it down to her. She didn't argue, only shook a pill out onto the palm of her hand. She swallowed it down dry with a practiced ease that surprised him. "You're awfully good at that for a stoic," he couldn't help noting, looking down at her critically.

She shrugged, a very tiny motion of one shoulder, as she leaned her head back against the wall.

"I was going to send you home," House told her with an exaggerated sigh.

"What..."

"I was going to send you home," he repeated, "and tell you not to come back until tomorrow morning, after you'd slept. But now I don't get to do that."

"Why not, sir?" she inquired, confusion fighting its way through the expression of pain on her face.

"Wait here," he directed her, stalking away and ignoring her question. "And don't try to get up either."

When he returned a minute or two later, Verhoeven clearly hadn't moved so much as an inch from where she'd been sitting when he'd left her. "I definitely can't send you home now," House observed bitterly. Cuddy wouldn't be pleased when Security told her that Verhoeven hadn't left the building yet.

"Why not?" she repeated.

He still didn't look inclined to answer her question, but Wilson came hurrying around the corner, saving him from having to think of a quick retort. "What do you need?" the oncologist demanded irritably, glaring at House and seeming to not have seen the intern on the floor. "I had to cut short an appointment with an actual patient."

"I need your legs," House told Wilson simply, shrugging.

"You need my legs?" Wilson repeated. "Why the hell..." He stopped abruptly mid-sentence, finally noticing Verhoeven on the ground. "What did you do?" he asked House sternly.

"I didn't do anything," House protested, throwing up his hands as a gesture of his innocence. "She slipped all on her own. Just because I happened to have shouted her name just before she fell doesn't necessarily mean anything."

Wilson sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Are you okay?" he asked Verhoeven.

"I believe so," she told him, her tone a little too hesitant for the oncologist's liking. "But, unfortunately, sir, I will need a hand getting up again."

"She's going to need more than just a hand," House cut in sharply.

"That is most likely true," she confirmed, her face flushing bright red. This was obviously an awkward situation for her and House wasn't doing anything to make it any easier on her.

"Okay," Wilson said, trying his best to sound matter of fact, "what's the easiest way to do this then?" He looked between the two, hoping that they'd give him some kind of direction. He'd never really done this before.

House shrugged apathetically. "Ask her. She's the one that needs the help."

After closing her eyes for a second, Verhoeven looked up at Wilson, blushing more deeply. "If you bend in front of me so that I can put my arms around your neck, when you stand, you're tall enough that I'll be pulled upright again."

Wilson obliged immediately, squatting in front of her, his back held straight. He went to the gym often enough to know that much. "Anything else?" he asked as he felt her hands clasp around his neck.

"If you take my elbows," she replied tightly, her breath stirring the hair at the back of his neck, "it will make it easier for us to balance together."

"Should I leave you two alone for a minute?" House broke in, eyebrows raised.

Wilson ignored him. "Okay, we'll go on three." Counting it down, he stood easily on three, feeling the girl's weight transfer through his shoulders as he raised her back to her feet. He couldn't help but hear the hiss of pain that accompanied it either.

"I'll need..."

House, surprisingly, was ready with her crutch. She took it gratefully, grasping it in her hand and leanign back against the wall again with a wince, her free arm back around her lower chest. "That's why I can't let you go home," House informed her sharply.

"You've done this before," Wilson noted, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at Verhoeven and ignored House.

"Unfortunately a few times too many, sir," she admitted. "I'm sorry to have leaned so heavily on you. Usually I can be more helpful."

"Wasn't a problem," Wilson assured her, realizing what he was doing and dropping his hand to his side. "Is there anything else that I can do?"

"You're not using your office are you?" House interrupted. "Good. You can examine her and then she can sleep on your couch. We'll take her home at the end of the day." He paused for a split second. "That's settled. Now, I have a patient to figure out." And he was off before either of then had a chance to say anything.

The other two watched him go. Then the oncologist turned to the intern, a clear look of concern on his face. "A quick exam probably wouldn't be a bad idea," he told her. "You're guarding your ribs fairly closely."

She sighed, wincing. "Yes, sir."

* * *

"House, why aren't you in the clinic?" Cuddy asked with a sigh. 

"I got a page," he replied, stabbing at the elevator button.

"From Wilson," Cuddy noted. "The clinic nurse saw."

"And tattled, obviously," House observed. He jabbed the button again and informed her, "He was examing a patient of mine and I'm assuming he must have found something."

"He already did a rule out for Peter two days ago, House. You'll have to find a better excuse than that." She put her hands on her hips and stared at him, daring him to come up with something else.

House sighed. "I wasn't going to tell you..." he started. Cuddy's pager interrupted him, and she held up a hand to stop him as she looked at it.

"It's Wilson," she said, wrinkling her forehead in confusion as the elevator doors opened.

"Damn it," House swore beneath his breath, pushing past her and climbing into the elevator.

"What did you do?" Cuddy demanded, following him.

"Nothing!" House protested, stabbing at the door close button. It was obvious that Cuddy didn't believe him.

* * *

"What did you give her?" Wilson questioned urgently, meeting them in the hall outside his office, his tie askew and worry on his face. 

"House, what did..." Cuddy started.

"50 mg Tramadol," House responded, cutting Cuddy off.

"How many?" Wilson said instantly, running his hand through his hair distractedly.

House shrugged. "I think it was only one," he answered. "But I wasn't really watching. She probably thought it was Vicodin, so I can't imagine that she'd have taken two. She'd know better than to deplete my stash like that."

"What did she have before you gave her the Tramadol?" Wilson replied, glancing over his shoulder into his office.

"House," Cuddy broke in sternly. Her displeasure at being left in the dark was obviously "What exactly did you do?"

"Nothing!" House repeated, holding up his hands. "She said she got a couple of Tylenol from Chase an hour or two ago, but she didn't mention anything else."

"Wilson, what's going on?" Cuddy stated flatly, crossing her arms under her breasts and staring up at the men.

Wilson sighed and gestured over his shoulder into his office. "Why'd you page her?" House hissed as the three went into the office.

"Because your intern is unconscious with seriouslydepressed breathing," Wilson hissed.

"This doesn't look like nothing," Cuddy noted, glaring at House as she took Verhoeven's pulse.

* * *

"Get Chase on the phone," House snapped at Cameron as Wilson and Foreman lifted Verhoeven from the couch onto a gurney. "We need to know exactly what he gave her."

Cameron looked between House and Cuddy briefly before nodding and hurrying away. This wasn't what she'd been expecting to find when House had paged her back to the office. She'd thought that he'd figured out what was wrong with Peter.

"Her O2 sat is way too low," Foreman observed. "She's cyanotic and we've got to get her on oxygen."

"There's a free room just down the next hall," Cuddy informed them, putting down the phone and trailing behind as Wilson and Foreman maneuvered the bed in that direction. "And, House, when this is all over, I want to know exactly what it is that you did."

He waved his hand over his shoulder at her, hurrying ahead of the other two men, glad of the Vicodin that he'd taken before this all started happening. "At least it's not clinic duty," he remarked beneath his breath as they wheeled around the corner and into the room.

* * *

"I heard the rumour that you'd broken an intern," Cuddy declared angrily, "but I thought that you'd jsut made another one cry for doign somethign stupid. A few days off, a shift with someone like Wilson, and they're fine. I didn't think that you'd actually _physically_ broken an intern. What happened? Did you get bored of crushing them emotionally?"

"I didn't do anything," House protested, fiddling with his cane.

"And that's why we had to rush her into a room, pump her full of Narcan to stop her from going into respiratory arrest, and give her oxygen to keep her from getting brain damage from the cyanosis," Cuddy snapped.

"How was I supposed to know that Chase had given her T-3s instead of regular Tylenols?" House retorted. "He didn't even tell her."

"Why are you carrying Tramadol around anyway?" Cuddy inquired with a sigh.

"For the same reason that Chase slipped her the T-3s," House countered. "Only unlike the T-3, the Tramadol was actually prescribed by her doctor." As he spoke, his eyes narrowed and his head tilted to the side slightly.

Cuddy sighed. "I'll get back to that in a minute," she said. "But I suppose that the broken ribs are Chase's fault too? Or do you have a hand in that one?"

"Gotta go," House broke in suddenly, standing and walking out of the room before Cuddy could get another word in.

* * *

"We finally got her respiration completely stabilized," Foreman reported, coming back into the room, "but she'll probably be pretty out of things for another hour or two." 

"I taped her ribs while she was still unconscious," Cameron noted, coming in behind Foreman. "I thought it would be less painful that way."

House waved his hand at them dismissively. "Reye's Syndrome," he stated, writing it out in big letters across the top of the whiteboard.

"We dismissed Reye's Syndrome because the symptoms didn't fit," Foreman countered, taking a seat and immediately leaning back in the chair, his arms crossed over his chest in an expression of his displeasure.

Cameron took her own seat, leaning forward eagerly, looking at the list of symptoms scrawled on the board. "The rash didn't fit, and niether did the rest of the symptoms," she said cautionsly. "The variations in blood pressure, the edema, the fevers..." Her voice trailed off as House took the eraser and cleared off all but the very first symptoms.

"Ignore the rest," House stated. "Seizures following a fever. They didn't bother to tell us about it, but there was probably lethargy too."

"Peter's mother knows not to give her children aspirin," Cameron told him. "I overheard her telling the babysitter not to give it to Michael the first time Peter was here. That was one of the reasons we ruled out Reye's the first time." She saw House's blank look and sighed. "Michael is the brother with the ear infection."

"She knows not to give the kiddies aspirin, but she wasn't the one who gave it to him," House replied.

"He's two, House," Foreman declared. "He didn't give it to himself."

"No, but his sister did," House answered. "The same sister who was being so helpful when she brought Spidey and ear infection boy to the clinic."

"Are you sure?" Cameron asked, sitting straight up. "What about the rest of the symptoms?"

"We've just had a prime example of what happens when you give someone drugs that they don't need," House noted.

"So now he overdosed on aspirin?" Foreman questioned incredulously. "ASA overdose doesn't even present with those symptoms, especially not after this amount of time."

"Not an overdose" House retorted, rolling his eyes. "Unnecessary medication. Most of his symptoms are a reaction to the IVIG, exacerbated by our attempts to treat an underlying condition that doesn't actually exist," he explained. "Take Spidey off everything for twenty-four hours, and he should stabilize on his own. We'll charcoal haemoperfuse his blood starting tomorrow night."

"He obviously only has a mild case of Reyes," Foreman observed, finally acquiescing to the diagnosis. "Why haemoperfuse? It's an unnecessary risk."

"It'll clear his blood of all the toxins we've pumped into it, as well as getting rid of anything left form the Reye's." House shrugged. "Now, shouldn't you be doing something? Maybe telling worried parents? Or babysitting unconscious interns? Or stopping unnecessary drugs from being pumped into a toddler?"

* * *

"Doctor Chase," House drawled, twirling his cane idly as he watched the Australian walk self-consciously into the diagnostics conference room. 

"Doctor House," Chase replied stiffly, peeling off his coat. He turned to hang it up, hoping that he didn't look as nervous as he felt.

"Verhoeven wanted me to personally thank you for your contributions to Spidey's diagnosis," House went on, his tone surprisingly civil. "She appreciated having her own role in it. And, after all, it isn't every day that we almost have to pump an intern's stomach in the name of a diagnosis."

Chase turned back to face the older doctor, his face red. His best response was a helpless shrug. "I didn't know that you'd been giving her painkillers too," he said, his tone equally as helpless. "It was the first time that I'd done it, but she was really hurting. I figured that it wouldn't hurt anything if she got some relief."

"Still, she wanted me to thank you personally," House repeated. "She especially appreciated you taking her shifts for the next week or so, until she recovers enough to get back to work."

Chase nodded resignedly. It would be a long week, but it was the least that he could do.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Foreman asked, watching as Verhoeven made her way carefully into the conference room. "Cuddy made House give you the week off. He did break your ribs and almost send you into respiratory arrest, after all." 

"Doctor Chase was very concerned and he feels quite guilty," she answered, gingerly starting to take off her jacket. It was obvious from the way she was moving that she was trying to guard her sore ribs without being obvious. "I thought that if he saw me back to work, he wouldn't feel quite so badly."

Foreman moved to help her take off her jacket, explaining, "House made him take all your shifts, but Cuddy gave House extra clinic hours all week for his part in the whole thing. Without you around to do it for him, he actually has to see the patients himself for a change."

Verhoeven cracked a smile, taking a seat at the table. "Then perhaps I will simply wait here until either Doctor House and the others arrive, instead of trying to seek out Doctor House and let him know I'm here. I wouldn't want to take him away from his patients," she commented perfectly evenly, raising an eyebrow at Foreman.

Foreman snickered and went to pour her a cup of coffee.

"Guess it takes breaking some ribs to make you finally grow a backbone," House commented, striding in through the door. "Heard through the grapevine that you were in the hospital, Verhoeven. Good to see you back again. The clinic could use some attention."

* * *

"You didn't actually make her go to the clinic, did you?" Wilson asked, setting his tray on an empty table in the cafeteria and watching as House took the seat opposite. 

House shrugged. "She was the one who couldn't wait a week to get back here. I figured that she might as well be put to work."

"The nurses like her," Wilson noted, digging into his salad.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," House replied. "Your point?"

"I'm not sure that I understand yours," Wilson replied.

"The nurses hate me. She's even more of an anti-me than Cameron, if that's possible. But aside from that, the whole 'broken' thing is the clincher, they know that I hate her. So, if I hate her..."

"I'm still not sure the saying applies in this case, but I get the point anyway, strangely enough," Wilson cut in.

"Once you understand the logic, it's only a small step to complete conversion," House quipped. "Next thing you know, you'll be alienating nurses yourself, avoiding patients, and..."

"Breaking interns?" Wilson queried, trying to hid his amusement in a bite of his salad.

"I was going to say making scathingly witty comments," House said, rolling his eyes. "But it appears as though you've already been working on that one. A word of advice: work harder, that one isn't very original. Even the _nurses _have been using that one."

"And comments like that one are the reason why the nurses don't like you very much."

"No, they don't like me because I call them names and put rubber snakes in their desk drawers, in addition to generally trying to make their lives miserable," House retorted.

"What gets me is that they're still doign the tray thing, even though their hatred of you is well-documented -- and well-deserved, may I add -- and they like Verhoeven," Wilson noted, stabbing another piece of lettuce.

House sighed and stood up. "You're not going to give up on this one until I explain, are you?"

Wilson shrugged non-committally. "Or until I managed to figure it out on my own."

"Come with me. I know where there's an empty room."

"And comments like that are what starts the rumours about the two of us," Wilson sighed, abandoning his salad and following House out of the cafeteria.

* * *

"Here," House said, tossing his cane to Wilson and limping over to the crash cart. 

"What..."

"That's not how you hold it," House interrupted, looking pointedly at the cane. "There's no point if you're not going to do it right."

Wilson had a bemused expression on his face, but he took the cane in his hand properly. "Better?"

House nodded. "Now, there's a patient on the bed coding, what are you going to do?"

"Call for the crash cart, of course," Wilson answered, rolling his eyes. "Exactly the same as any other doctor."

"Face the bed," House ordered curtly. "And call for the crash cart, like you're running one of those practice codes they used to make us do in med school. Pretend it's the real thing."

"We used to get a cadaver in med school," Wilson protested, turning to face the bed and moving to set the cane aside.

"Pretend like you need the cane," House directed. "And run the code."

Wilson sighed, and started going through the motions of a code, calling for the cart. House gave it a push, sending it across the floor to Wilson, just as Wilson turned around to grab for the defibrillator paddles, the cane still thoughtlessly gripped in his hand. The cane collided with the side of the cart, and, with a crash that reverberated through the room, the cart tipped over onto its side, spilling its contents onto the floor.

"You just killed the patient," House said, limping over to grab back his cane. "Good thing we didn't actually waste a cadaver on you."

"So you're not just a sadistic bastard," Wilson noted with some surprise.

"Don't let it get out," House cautioned, starting for the door and leaving the mess of the spilled crash cart on the floor behind him. "I've got a reputation to maintain."

* * *

Author's Note -- And that's it for this story. Is the character worth continuing with, or should Katrien Verhoeven be abandoned forever? Let me know. Thanks to all that read. And double thanks to all that reviewed.


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